Fairy Stone
by Colubrina
Summary: Draco is sentenced to one year in Azkaban, release contingent upon someone willing to vouch for his good behavior. Hermione does. "Oh, I want you," he said. "You, just you, always you. You forever and you for always and you until the bloody sun explodes." Dramione. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

"Azkaban." Draco Malfoy put his head down into his arms and tried not to give in to despair. He'd been sixteen – six-bloody-teen – when he'd been told to hold his arm out so that monster could brand him. He'd been sixteen when he'd been sent off to school and told to kill Dumbledore or watch his mother be cut into pieces in front of him as punishment for his failure.

Didn't matter, apparently.

Didn't even matter he hadn't even killed the man. Sure didn't matter he'd gotten to experience the displeasure of the Dark Lord over that.

He wondered if the people who'd condemned him even knew what the Cruciatus Curse felt like. Wondered if they knew that the Dark Lord had figured how exactly how long you could use it on someone before they went insane.

Legilimancy had its uses.

Not that they'd care. He was a Death Eater.

"It's only one year," his lawyer said, gathering up his papers with the air of fussy efficiency the man affected when he knew the information he had to convey was bad. "You're really very lucky. Your father, Thoros Nott, all the others, they got life."

"It's only one year _if_ someone is willing to take on my parole," Draco said. "Someone not related to me, someone with no connections at all to the bloody-be-damned Death Eaters, which means _no one_ I know."

"Maybe you should have made more friends," the lawyer said rather dryly.

"Not as easy as it sounds when you're one of the bad guys," Draco muttered. "I'm going to die in Azkaban, just like the rest of them." He put his head down. "Fuck. I've never even had sex."

The lawyer ignored that; clients confessed all sorts of things it was better not to hear. "I found someone to vouch for you so, Mr. Malfoy, it's one year and then you'll be out."

Draco's laugh was bitter and disbelieving. "Really? If they find out you bribed someone to do it they'll throw you in Azkaban too, and I know you aren't that loyal." He shook his head. "Don't make this worse than it is with false hope."

"Don't berate the man."

Draco looked up to see Hermione Granger slip into the barren conference room. She was wearing some kind of white linen dress that looked like spring and garden parties and life. He found he hated her for that dress more than he ever had in his life. It taunted him with all the things he'd never have again.

"Come to gloat?" he asked, summoning what little bravado he had left. "Plan to think of me suffering while you get lauded as the improbable, wonderful heroine you are?"

She shook her head. The lawyer looked at her. "You have three minutes, tops," he said and walked out the door.

Draco glared at the woman as she walked around the table, keeping his eyes away from the red, inflamed scar on her forearm. Trust the stupid bitch not to have the grace to cover it. She didn't say anything at first, just pulled something from a pocket and tied it around his neck. "I came to give you this," she said. "And to tell you I'll see you in a year. Sooner if I can get a pass."

He flinched as her hands brushed against his skin.

"I can't give you any kind of actual charm," she said in a low voice near his ear as she pretended to fumble with the knot. "They'd take that away from you; this… this is older magic: a fairy stone. The prison officials probably won't recognize it for what it is; they're pretty rare. It should help you." Her breath was warm on his neck and he could smell she'd been drinking some kind of herbal tea. "Hold on, Malfoy. It's one year and I'll be there when it's over. Just hang on for me, okay?"

"Why do you care, Mudblood?" he asked when she stood back and looked at him, worry in her warm eyes. "You hate me."

"You're an idiot," she said. "I really will try to get a pass to come see you. Hang on, you stupid prat."

And then the guards were taking him away and he didn't look back.

. . . . . . . . . .

They stripped him. Gave him the striped uniform. The deeper he got into the complex that was Azkaban, the less the staff even pretended to professionalism, and by the time he was thrown into his cell he'd been kicked, cuffed and mocked.

"Wonder if he'll be a laugher of a crier," one of the guards said with a derisive snort as Draco picked himself up off the stone floor and looked around. "Like the accommodations, rich boy?" the man continued with a sneer. "You get one bucket for water, one for food, one for waste, and if you're very lucky we'll remember which one we're supposed to empty."

Draco sat down on the cot. He supposed he should feel lucky it wasn't a pile of lice-infested straw. One cot. One thin blanket. I am, he thought, sitting in an illustration of the meaning of the word 'grim.'

The guards laughed as they walked away from him and, once they were out of sight he scrambled to the bars. They were right; there was one empty bucket, presumably what counted as the facilities, a bucket with some bread and apples, and one with water. He tasted it; it was brackish. He picked up an apple and began to eat it. It was mealy.

Well, at least it wasn't rotten.

Lucky.

He saved the apple seeds because he wasn't sure what to do with them, setting them in a neat pile in one corner of the cell, then lay back down on his cot and waited for the Dementors to drift by and ensure what little happiness he might feel disappeared. His fingers crept up to the thing Granger had tied around his neck. Whatever it was, it was so unremarkable no one had bothered to take it from him. It felt like a flat stone, worn smooth over years. His fingers found a hole, slightly off center, which the witch had used to run the strand of leather through.

A fairy stone.

What a crock. Why she'd claim to give him such a thing he didn't know. Those things were nearly impossible to find and worth a bloody fortune. If Granger had really had one, she could have lived like a queen her whole life on the proceeds of selling it.

She certainly wouldn't have tied it around his worthless neck.

He held on to it and wished it were real as he lay on his cot and waited for the Dementors to come.

It was cold, and dank, and dim in his cell. His uniform was too thin, his blanket too shabby.

He lay on his side and held the rock.

He waited.

When morning came he was still waiting. He was cold and hungry and sore from the abuse he'd taken the day before but, he had to admit, despite seeing Dementors floating down the hall outside his gated cell he'd never felt the searing cold of their attention.

He fingered the rock at his neck. It seemed impossible the woman had given him an actual fairy stone but maybe she had.

He knelt by the water bucket and scooped several handfuls into his mouth, trying not to choke at the taste. He pulled the hunk of bread out of the food bucket and, when he heard the sound of feet moving down the hall, retreated back to the far wall of his cell. He'd lived with Voldemort; he knew when to get out of reach.

Always.

You always wanted to be out of reach.

The guards laughed at him and he looked down. "Wonder how long he'll stay so pretty," one of them said and Draco shuddered at the threat implied in that leering taunt.

"Can't," the other guard said. "He's a short-timer. You want to play, go find someone else."

Draco tried not to let the way he sagged with relief show as he bit into the decidedly stale bread.

"He's only short time if someone logs him out," the first guard said.

"He's already on the schedule for release," the second said. "Someone out there loves him enough to plan to be here the very day he's eligible for parole. Anyone loves the bastard that much, they'll go after you if you go after him. Don't fuck up your career for a bit of arse, mate. Take my advice and go find someone else. The place is full of pretty newbies this month; go find one of them before they all start to smell too ripe."

They were gone, then, and Draco sat down on his cot, stale bread in one hand, and reached up to finger that stone around his neck. "Hermione Granger," he breathed out, "I owe you."

. . . . . . . . . .

Dementors drifted by and ignored him.

The guards usually remembered to feed him and if days went by where they didn't, well, no one cared what happened to prisoners in Azkaban. The water bucket, at least, was charmed to magically refill so, once he learned to pull it far enough away from the bars no kick could send it spilling across his floor, he always had water.

The guards emptied the waste bucket when they felt like it.

He sat and thought. He thought about himself, his life, what he'd done. What he hadn't done.

He tried to tell himself stories in his head, books he remembered reading, plays his mother had taken him too. It worked at first. But days would go by and he didn't remember them. Time was slippery and he was light headed from hunger fairly often and, even without the crushing despair of the Dementors, he could feel himself slipping away.

He took to holding the rock at his neck and replaying the meeting with Granger. She'd worn a white dress. She'd smelled of herbal tea. He would lie down and hold the fairy stone and think about the way she looked and the way she smelled and that she was going to come and get him.

He'd called her a Mudblood.

Maybe she'd change her mind. He could fret for hours that she might change her mind, that he'd insulted her one time too many. Why would she come get him with her white dress and good smell when he was just this shivering, starving, wretched creature? He was a Death Eater, the guards were happy to remind him whenever they walked by. He was scum.

Most of the time, of course, he wasn't being taunted. Most of the time he was just lying on his side, holding onto the rock that kept the Dementors at bay, trying to hold onto the hope that she'd come get him.

If he tried hard enough, he could hear her voice. "Hang on for me, okay?"

She'd said that after he called her a Mudblood, hadn't she? He's called her that and she'd still planned to come get him, right? All he had to do was hang on.

He remembered one day she'd said she'd try to get a pass to come see him. He began to hold on to that hope as he drank the water, ate the inadequate food, and shivered under his blanket. He sat in his miserable cell, feeling impossible hope, and the Dementors ignored him.

By the time she finally came he was, he knew, filthy. He didn't get enough water to wash, not ever, and he was afraid that if he got wet he'd get sick anyway. He sat in the visitor's room, threatened by guards who'd shoved him and hit him as they brought him in, and, though he'd waited for this meeting for weeks – for months? - he suddenly wished it weren't happening.

She was there, then, looking at him, her fingers grazing the place he'd split his cheek open when he'd fallen against his floor after being kicked by a guard bringing food; he'd been stupid, letting himself be too near the bars at the wrong time but he'd been nearly starving and desperate for something to eat. He cringed away from the feel of her.

She wasn't in white this time. Funny, he'd spent so much time picturing her in that white, summer dress she seemed wrong in some kind of slacks and a soft, grey jumper.

"I know I'm disgusting," was all he said. "You don't have to touch me."

"You're still in there," she said, her voice nearly a whisper. "Oh, thank God. I've been so worried."

"Yeah," he muttered, looking down at the floor, at the wall behind her, anywhere but at the woman he'd tormented for years that had somehow decided to…

"What is this?" he asked, touching the rock – the fairy stone – at his neck. "How did you find it?" Why would you give it to me, was what he didn't ask. Thank you, was what he couldn't say.

"I found it on a walk with my parents when I was six," she said, her hands folded on the table between them. "I've saved it since then. Wore it during the War. But the Fey weren't a part of our War, not really. House Elves, maybe, but they were on our side. Dementors."

"Dementors," Draco Malfoy repeated. He could hear his voice was harsh from disuse. "I didn't realize they were Fey but that makes sense." He swallowed hard. "Granger, you…"

"Five more months," she said. "Hang on for five more months, Malfoy. I've got a room in my flat for you while you regroup. I'll get you put back together. Just hang on."

"It's been that long?" he asked, closing his eyes. "I… time runs together." He didn't open them as he heard himself say, his voice almost begging, "Why are you helping me?"

"You're an idiot," she said, and she sounded like she was crying. "So smart and so damn stupid. Just keep warding off the damned fairies and stay in one piece for me, okay?"

"I can do that," he said.

When he opened his eyes she was gone and he wasn't sure she'd ever even been there.

"Arsehole," the guard said as the man tossed him back into his cell. "Why a fucking war heroine would waste her time with the likes of you I'll never know."

So she had been there.

"I don't know why either," Draco whispered as he lay back down on his side and held the fairy stone, the old, old magic that protected the wearer against the Fey. Just a rock with a hole worn in it by running water, just the most precious thing he'd ever owned.

His sanity, or at least some vestige of it, on a leather string around his neck.

Hope. Impossible. Improbable. But so very real.

He tried to follow the days again but he couldn't. Had it been one day or two since his food bucket had had the rotting apple? Had the man down the hall stopped sobbing today or yesterday?

He gave up and just waited for her to come back and get him. Sometimes he realized he was screaming. Sometimes he realized he was kneeling at his cot and pounding his head into the frame. He was barely holding on, even with the fairy stone. Too much solitude. Too little food.

Five months.

Four

Three.

He didn't know and then she was there leading him by the hand out of the prison. "Jesus, look at you," she muttered. "Those arseholes."

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – This is an expansion, done at the request of my lovely beta Shealone, of Drabble 34. It's a four-shot and the whole thing is quite done because, for once, I decided to try to write the whole fic up front. **_

_**I hope you enjoy it. :)**_

_**Also. I'm on tumblr and I'm very confused but come and, uh, tumble at me. colubrina . tumblr . c o m**_


	2. Chapter 2

Her flat was so clean he was afraid to touch anything; he just stood inside the doorway in his filthy prison garb, his hair matted. "Granger," Draco said, his voice choked. "Tell me what to do."

She closed her eyes for a moment as if trying to find some inner strength and then said, her voice very calm, "Which do you want first, to be clean or to eat?"

He looked at his hands and shuddered. "Clean," he said. "They did feed me but I stopped hoping I'd ever be clean again a long time ago."

She nodded and led him by the hand to her bathroom and began to fill a tub. Draco stood passively until Hermione Granger turned to leave him. "Don't go," he said. "Please."

She startled and he cursed himself but explained anyway. "If you go, how can I be sure you'll come back, that you'll still be there?"

She looked like she was choking back tears but all she said was, "If that's what you want." She helped him strip off the prison rags and tossed them into a pile on the floor. She said something that sounded like, "We'll burn those, fucking arseholes. Goddamned wizards have obviously never heard of the fucking Geneva Convention or Amnesty International or not being bloody medieval monsters."

None of what she said made any sense to him.

She nudged him into the bath and he realized, looking down at his naked body, how thin he was. Well, he thought to himself, I wouldn't attract the guards' attention now. I'm not exactly pretty anymore.

"If I'd known all I needed to do to get a sponge bath from you, Granger, was spend a year in Azkaban, I'd have done it before now," he quipped trying to make this less uncomfortable as she started to wash his chest for him. She made a gesture as if she were going to smack him in the arm and he flinched before he realized she was teasing.

She paled at his flinch. "Right," she muttered.

She changed the water three times and at the end he was sobbing as she struggled to comb out his hair. She handed him a towel and he saw tears running down her face too.

"I'll get better," he promised her, reaching a hand out to brush the moisture away from her cheek. "You don't have to worry about me."

She snorted at that. "Idiot," she said. "It's a bit too late for that."

She helped him dry off and gave him clean clothes and led him back out to her kitchen where she fed him soup. "I told you I'd come get you," she said, her hands almost twitching with the obvious need to brush his hair out of his eyes, to fuss, to nurture.

"It was hard to believe," he admitted as he sat at her table, clean, dressed, eating hot food for the first time in a year. He could feel a bit of his equilibrium return; just being clean made him feel less like an animal. "Why did you give me this?" He touched the rock still at his neck.

"Because you needed it," she said simply. "Because you didn't turn us in when your father asked you to. Because I owed you."

"You gave me… Merlin, Granger, you gave me hope and sanity and all I did was cower away and say I wasn't sure who you were."

"It was what you had to give," she said, her voice so low he could barely hear her. "So I gave what I had."

"Did you even know what it was?" he demanded.

She sighed and leaned back and looked at him: pale, thin, with a scar on his cheek that would probably never fade completely. He squirmed under her examination, afraid he'd been found wanting somehow.

He'd called her Mudblood for years. She'd saved him anyway.

He almost hated her for that.

Almost loved her, too.

"I didn't at first," she said. "Didn't for years, really. I just picked it up out on a ramble with my parents. I wore it because I was the kind of weird, loner kid who wears rocks and thinks that makes her special."

Draco Malfoy laughed at that, picturing a very small, bushy-haired Granger with her hands on her hips, annoying all the other kids at primary. She smiled at him.

"It's good to hear you laugh," she said.

He slouched, suddenly self-conscious and silent again.

"It wasn't until one of your Slytherin friends – Nott – tried to get me to give it to him that I realized it must be valuable. I mean, he was talking to me, which was pretty much just not done, and he offered me 30 galleons for 'that ugly rock around your Mudblood neck.'"

"Typically clumsy," Draco muttered. "Nott always thought he was the bloody cat's meow, but he was as subtle as a brick."

"I figured out what it was, and that he'd not only tried to cheat me, he'd been unbelievably cheap about it – "

"I'll say," Draco muttered. "Thing's worth a small fortune."

"Well, I knew to be wary just because of his House." she grinned at him. "Timeo serpentium et dona ferentes."

"So you gave it to me," Draco said, reaching up to finger the stone again. "Should I be afraid of the gift-bearing lion?"

"Oh, absolutely." She stood up and began clearing the dishes. "More later," she said as he looked at the stove. "Too much at once and you'll just throw it up."

He nodded.

She put a hand on his shoulder. "I'll get you put back together, Malfoy. I promise."

He looked down at her arm; she'd stripped off her jumper and shoved the sleeves of her shirt up when she'd bathed him. The 'mudblood' scar was still there, still clearly visible. She followed his gaze and sighed. "Your aunt used a cursed blade. It's been a slow healing process."

"I'm sorry," he said.

She shrugged. "You didn't do it," she said. "Let me show you your room."

He followed her to the room she'd set up for him. It was clean and pleasant and had a window that let in light and he shrank back from it.

"I don't want to be alone," he said when she put a hand on his arm, a wordless question. He smiled bitterly. "I'm still a coward, see. I am still in here, still me: worthless and craven and unwanted." He stepped back out of what was his room. "You should have given your rock to someone else, Granger. Someone who deserved it."

"I wanted to give it to you," she said. "And maybe I thought you deserved it."

"Didn't you also try to free house elves?" he said, trying to sneer as he shivered outside his room. "You may not have the best judgment."

She laughed at that but he felt her pull him further down the hall into what was clearly her room.

Granger, as it turned out, was a bit of a slob in private. A drawer was open and he was fairly sure that was lingerie hanging out. She had books piled on a nightstand as well as an empty teacup that made him nearly itch with the desire to slip a coaster under it. Even a year in prison couldn't undo Narcissa Malfoy's social training. The only chair had laundry piled on it. The curtains were drawn and it was dark and the bed was made but rumpled and she pulled him down onto it. He lay there on the soft bed in Hermione Granger's dim bedroom and began to shake again. "I've got you," she said, lying down next to him. "You don't have to be alone. I can keep you from being alone."

"Why?" he whispered into her hair as she wrapped her arms around him.

"I owe you," she said. "And what happened to you wasn't right. I promised I'd get you out and put you back together and I will."

. . . . . . . . . .

It was fully dark when Draco woke up. His mouth was full of her hair and he wasn't cold.

He was hungry.

Well, he was always hungry. He didn't remember what it felt like to not be hungry.

He sat up and pushed his way out of Hermione Granger's bed and made his way back to her kitchen. He didn't have a wand and he had no idea how to use her Muggle appliances so he just stood over the pot she'd left on the stove and spooned cold soup into his mouth.

He stopped before he was full, scared she was right and he'd just make himself sick, and drifted around the darkened apartment, not sure what to do with himself. He ran his fingers over her bookshelves, though it was too dim to make out the titles, and finally settled onto a couch that faced a small, bricked up, fireplace.

"Why don't you turn on a light?"

He flinched at the sound of her voice but managed to turn towards her. "I don't know how," he said.

"Fuck," she muttered. "Of course you don't."

She showed him the switch on the wall. "Electricity," she said, "and, no, I don't really know how it works. It just does."

"Why do you live in a Muggle flat?" Draco asked her as she pushed him back into the kitchen where she flipped one of those switches and made it light and put a kettle on for tea.

"It's what I can afford," she said. "How do you like it?"

He was about to say the flat seemed fine until he realized she was holding out a tea cup and he said, helplessly, "Hot?"

She nodded and turned back to the counter. "Hot I think I can manage." He watched her drop teabags into two mugs and put some milk in a small pitcher. "I'm a terrible cook, I'm sorry. I can heat things from tins and get takeaway on payday and stuff but it's probably going to seem pretty dreadful to you after growing up with house elves and then Hogwarts and – "

"Granger." He cut her off. "I've been eating rotten fruit and old bread and moldy cheese for a year. Your tinned soup is the best food I've had since the trial."

She turned to face him and made a face. "It's stupid, I know, I just… you should know what you're getting into, having me be the one to patch you up. You'll be stuck in this Muggle flat eating tinned food and frozen pizza. Pansy Parkinson or that stupid Theo Nott would probably do a better job but they've got ties to – "

"Granger." He stopped her again, not wanting to confess he was afraid neither Pansy nor Theo would have taken him in like this, even if they had been allowed to. He didn't want to wonder about how alone he might really be. "Why are you living like this? You could have sold this rock and never… you could have dined out on bleeding caviar every night, not – "

"You needed it," she said as the kettle began to whistle and she turned around and he was staring at her back as she poured water into their mugs. He reached up to touch the fairy stone at his neck.

"You don't even like me," he whispered.

"The thing where you're stupid at me is already getting old," she said as she put the mug down in front of him along with a plate of bland looking biscuits. "Liking you has nothing to do with it."

"There's feeling like you owe someone and there's giving up a fortune for them," he said, still mystified. "I wouldn't have done it for you."

"You did, though," she said, nibbling on a biscuit. "Don't even pretend that telling that crazy bastard Voldemort it was Harry you had wouldn't have gotten you anything you wanted."

"Anything except his death," Draco said, swallowing some tea and wondering at how the day before he'd been shivering on a cot in hell and now he was sitting in this woman's kitchen drinking tea. "I was a pretty big fan of Potter killing him by that point."

"Well, I'm a pretty big fan of paying you back for that," she said. "Fucking arseholes putting you into prison." She broke a biscuit into two pieces rather vigorously and took a bite out of one of the halves. After she swallowed she added, "That wasn't right."

"How long can I stay?" he asked; he wasn't even sure if the Manor was still there and was quite sure he never wanted to step foot in the place again. Living there with Voldemort had tainted it for him forever.

Hermione Granger studied him and he stared back. That ridiculous hair was going everywhere and she looked sad and worried and weirdly forlorn. "Until you want to leave," she said at last. "There's no deadline. It's not fancy, but you're welcome here"

"I'm not sure how normal I am anymore," he said, looking down at his fingers as they broke the biscuit into smaller and smaller pieces. "Sometimes in… in Azkaban I thought… I thought I was going crazy, even with this thing you gave me. Time was weird and I was…"

"You'd been half starved," she muttered, clearly angry on his behalf. "And too cold. Your body was probably shutting down into some kind of survival mode." She took a deep breath and said in a more level voice. "I'm sure once you gain some weight back and aren't braced against abuse every hour you'll feel a lot better."

He pulled a smirk out of some place deep within himself. "Are you going to let me sleep with you every night?"

She actually blushed.

Draco stared at her and, very slowly, let his smirk broaden. Merlin, it felt good to flirt, even a little. It made him feel like a human being to tease her even if, truth be told, the idea of being alone in the dark for too long made him shake with fear and if she turned him down he knew he'd end up curled back into a ball holding onto the damn rock she'd given him.

"I know you don't want to be alone," she finally muttered, "so if you need to, then yes."

"I know I want to," he said.

"I'm glad you're feeling more," Hermione paused and seemed to search for the word she wanted. She finally settled on "normal."

. . . . . . . . . .

They settled into a routine. Hermione took off in the morning to work at her job. Draco had asked her – once – why she was working a low-wage retail job and she'd said, her voice very controlled, "No N.E.W.T.s."

"You were winning the war," he'd protested but the look on her face made it clear that topic was off limits and he'd dropped it.

Bravery wasn't something he was good at.

Not even bravery in conversation.

Being alone during the day wasn't horrible. He could do that; that it was light out helped.

He began to get comfortable with her flat. For all that she lived in a Muggle neighborhood, Hermione hadn't stocked her flat with confusing Muggle things and, once she showed him how the stove worked, everything was familiar. He read her books, looked out the windows at the busy Muggle world with only vague interest and waited for her to come back. He slowly put weight back on, slowly stopped grabbing at the fairy stone at every sudden noise.

Fairies were dangerous and unpredictable and prone to showing up anywhere. He'd never even really liked house elves, for all that they were useful little things. The discovery that Dementors were Fey, well, that had solidified his dislike for all things Seelie. And UnSeelie.

She had a basket of old _Daily Prophets_. He sorted them into chronological order and tried to catch up on what had happened while he'd been… away. There were a lot of editorials about the abuses of the Ministry under Voldemort and self-congratulatory pieces on how everything was better now. Early praise of Harry Potter faded away. He never found a single article about Granger – or Weasley for that matter – though it was possible she simply hadn't kept any of those papers.

She didn't like to talk about the war.

"It happened. It's over," was all she would say.

He didn't find anything about his own trial. There was a brief mention at the one year anniversary of the war that all known Death Eaters were in Azkaban, all their assets seized, and wasn't the world a much better place now.

"So," he'd said, reading that. "I'm poor."

Hermione had shrugged. "Welcome to the hoi polloi," she said. "What do you want for dinner?"

"Lobster bisque," he'd said. "And duck. And maybe fresh, seasonal vegetables prepared with some oil that tastes just like butter but which costs 10 times as much."

"Settle for leftover Chinese takeaway?" she'd asked.

"That sounds perfect," he'd said, watching her smile, wanting to reach out and touch that expression.

He slept at odd hours as though his internal clock had simply stopped working sometime over that year of cold, dim misery. Some days he'd wake when Hermione walked in the door. He waited for her to scold him for laziness or sloth but she never did. She just heated some thing or other to eat and told funny stories about the people who came into the shop where she worked. He could feel his natural disdain for the masses slowly reassert itself as she mimicked some of the customers.

"'So,'" she said, pitching her voice to sound querulous as she stirred some kind of prepared curry in a pot, "'I read a book review in the _Prophet_ last year about a book on French fashion. The cover was blue. Do you have it?'"

Draco snorted. "Did you?"

"Damned if I know," Hermione said. "Do I look like a reference librarian to you?"

He looked at her. Hair up in a bun that was coming loose, a cardigan, sensible shoes. "Actually," he said. "You do look almost like a librarian cliché. If you just added glasses on a chain around your neck you'd be perfect."

She turned and threw a potholder at him. He caught it and laughed, then pushed his own hair out of his face.

"Are you ready to go to Diagon Alley yet?" she asked.

Draco stiffened. He hadn't left her flat since she'd brought him back. She kept pushing and he kept saying no.

"You could get that hair cut," she said.

"I'm not sure anyone would do it," Draco said. "Death Eater and all."

"I've saved enough for you to get a wand," she said and, at that, his breath caught.

He'd played with her wand, remembering all the spells he'd known. Magic was what he was and he missed having his own wand with an ache that grew every day. Nevertheless, he didn't think he could bear going out and facing people, facing _Ollivander_, who'd been held captive in the cellar of the Manor.

"Your wand likes me well enough," he said. "I don't need one. Save your money."

Hermione ladled the reheated curry into two bowls and set one in front of him, another at her place. He waited for her to sit, to eat. Instead she stood behind him and ran her fingers through his hair, pulling it back into a loose ponytail and tying it there.

"See, you like it long," he said, and reached a hand back to her. She took it and sighed.

"You have to go out sooner or later," she said. "You're letting this flat become a new cell."

"A much nicer cell," Draco said. "Hot food, running water, pretty girl. No reason to leave."

"To get a wand," she said. "And I'm not a pretty girl."

"Beautiful woman, then," he said with a shrug. "I'm not going to argue the point."

"Mudblood," she said. "And if I can go out, so can you."

"No one cares about that anymore," Draco said. "Death Eater, though."

She dropped his hand. "You're wrong," she said.

"People won't care I'm a Death Eater?" he asked, starting to eat the curry as she sat down.

"No, they'll care." She sighed. "That wasn't what I meant."

"War heroine," he said.

She shrugged. "It's good for propaganda. The Ministry puts me on a stick and waves me around and people cheer. Doesn't do me a lot of good."

"Potter?" Draco hadn't asked about his nemesis yet and Hermione looked a little surprised.

"Hates it too," she said. She grinned, suddenly. "Ron loves it. Makes his mother crazy."

"You're still...?" He wasn't sure what he was asking.

"Friends?" Hermione raised her brow. "Of course." She took a bite of curry. "I haven't brought them round because I didn't think you'd exactly like it. You weren't chums."

"Hardly," Draco said. "They… they're okay with my being here?"

Hermione didn't answer for a moment and that was answer enough. "I'm a big girl," she said at last. "I get to make my own decisions. I'm not a fan of Ron's romance with Lavender either, but I smile and play nice and so will he or he'll regret it."

"Lavender?" Draco asked with a sneer. "He's dating a girl named _Lavender_? Who does that to a child?"

Hermione gaped at him a moment and then smirked back. "Says the man named 'Draco'."

"There is nothing wrong with my name," he said with mock huff. "It's the name of a noble constellation. Much better than a colour. A _dilute_ colour at that."

Hermione laughed and he leaned back and watched the way her delight transformed her. "You know," she said, "I'm never going to be able to see that woman now and not hear your voice in my head saying 'a _dilute_ colour' in that utterly scathing tone."

That night as he lay next to her, his hand on her back between her shoulder blades, Draco said, "I'm scared to go out."

"I know," she said.

"I'm so worthless, Hermione. I can't even leave your flat."

She turned and he yanked his hand away lest he cross some line. Lest he run his hand along the curves under her faded t-shirt that drew his attention.

She pulled herself closer to him and he closed his eyes as she wrapped herself around him, pressed those curves into him. "You aren't worthless," she said. "Give yourself some time. I've been pushing too hard, I'm sorry."

"You'll stay with me?" he asked into the darkness after listening to her breathe for a while.

"Every step," she promised.

"It'd be nice to have a wand again," he said.

"You do tend to hog mine," she teased, though he thought she sounded very careful as though she weren't sure he could handle even the slightest criticism when he was considering going out.

He wasn't that fragile, damn her.

Even if he was, he didn't need to hear a reminder of it in her voice.

"I'm not good at sharing," he said. "Spoiled only child and all that."

She made a muffled snorting noise as she burrowed herself more deeply against him. "I'm an only child too, prat, and I share just fine."

"Not me," he said.

"No," she said. "I suppose not."

Draco swallowed at that vague response and held on tighter.

. . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – 'Timeo serpentium et dona ferentes' (I fear snakes, even bearing gifts) is obviously a play on 'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes' (I fear Greeks, even bearing gifts) from the Aeneid by Virgil**_

_**Thank you for all your lovely feedback and comments. You know how I love them.**_


	3. Chapter 3

Ollivander just looked at them when they entered his shop. "Miss Granger," he said at last. "You haven't lost your wand, have you?"

"No," she smiled at the man. "I've brought you a customer."

Ollivander regarded Draco Malfoy with a level stare and Draco could feel himself shrink under that gaze.

"We don't have to do this," he muttered at last. "Hermione, let's go."

"You don't want a wand, Mr. Malfoy?" Ollivander asked, turning a pulling out a box. "I'd think after your travails you'd be most interested in returning to a full life as quickly as possible."

Draco could feel his fingers clutch around Hermione Granger's hand. She'd pulled him from bed and hustled him out of her flat before he could change his mind; he'd kept himself as near to her as he dared as she apparated them both to Diagon Alley and then walked with him to the wand maker's shop. The walls of the street seemed to press in on him and he'd felt himself relax when they entered the close confines of the shop. That is, he'd relaxed until the wand maker, a man who had every reason to despise his family, had regarded him with that disconcerting, steady look.

The man held out a box. "Try this."

Draco's hands shook as he pulled the lid off the box and lifted out the wand. It was an attractive wand, long and with a bit of a silver sheen to the wood. He flicked it hesitantly and nothing happened.

Ollivander began to look interested and, taking the first wand away, handed Draco a second box. "Perhaps Blackthorn," the man murmured. This wand gave off a vicious spark as soon as it was lifted from its box and Draco almost dropped it in his eagerness to let it go.

"Very interesting, indeed," Ollivander said, handing Draco a third box.

"Third time's the charm," Hermione said and Draco flashed her a wan and nervous smile.

"Maybe after what I've done I'm not meant to carry a wand anymore," he said softly. He pulled the third wand from the box and closed his eyes as his fingers folded around it. This one. He could just tell. He felt the thrum of power again as the wand settled into his hand; it was a steady, reassuring caress.

"Or maybe you are," Ollivander said. "Willow." The man's voice sounded fascinated by the final fit. "I would not have expected that but then, of course, it makes sense; the wands always know. Like your first wand, Mr. Malfoy, this one has a unicorn hair core."

Hermione pulled her bag up and began to root around for her money.

"No," Ollivander said.

She looked up at him, her hand still deep within the endless reaches of that ratty bag and Ollivander said again, "No. Your money's no good here, Miss Granger." He handed her the box for Draco's wand and added, "Some of us remember what you did." He looked at Draco and added, "The old idea that the blood of the parents tells you who the child is needs to be set aside."

Draco watched Hermione rub the scar on her arm with an unconscious movement. She'd worn a shirt that bared it as she almost always did, claiming fabric rubbing against it was irritating. He tucked an arm around her and pulled her against him, feeling he was, for the first time, able to offer her comfort instead of the other way round.

"Interesting, indeed," Ollivander said. "The wands always know. I bid you good day, Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy."

"Well," Hermione said as they stood on the cobblestone stoop outside the shop. "I didn't expect that."

"I'd think you'd get inundated with freebies like that," Draco said. "War heroine and all."

She shrugged. "Yesterday's news. Today I'm just another girl with no family connections." She rubbed at her arm again and said, a little too brightly, "But now you have a wand and we have enough spare cash to go get some ice cream so let's go get a treat before we go back and stare morosely at the walls of our dreary, Muggle flat."

"I like ice cream," Draco said. "But we could also just get a pint at the market and eat it on the couch."

"Be brave," she said as she took his hand. He let her twine her fingers through his again and avoided the urge to grab at the rock around his neck. "It will be fine," she said. "Ollivanders was fine."

It wasn't fine.

Draco could feel the stares that followed them, could see the way people casually realized they had business on the other side of the street, could feel the way Hermione's hand tightened around his in a slowly growing fury.

"Maybe," she said as they approached the shop, "we could get cones and eat them as we head back home."

He tried not to let his relief show. "Home is good," he said.

It would have stayed merely uncomfortable if Ron Weasley and the dilute color romance of his weren't in line near them. "Hermione," Weasley said, obviously happy to see her. She hugged him, pulling herself away from Draco to wrap her arms around the ginger haired git.

Draco pushed down the feeling of unreasonable jealousy that surged through him and instead smiled politely at Lavender. She was pretty, albeit in an obvious and rather tarty way; her makeup was expertly applied if, in his opinion, a little heavy for this early in the day, and her short skirt showed off excellent legs. Draco glanced over at Hermione, who had her impossible hair up in one of the messy ponytails she wore when she wasn't working and had dressed in a loose jumper and some kind of Muggle slacks. Compared to her, he decided, this Lavender looked like she was trying too hard.

Trying too hard and still coming up short.

She must have seen the flash of contemptuous dismissal in his eyes because she pulled a sneer of her own out of somewhere. "Granger's little project, I see," she said. "Her ongoing excuse."

"I'm not sure we've ever been introduced," he said, a lifetime of manners overcoming his urge to shrink back against Hermione. "I'm – "

"I remember you," the woman said. "I'm just surprised you have the nerve to show your face."

"I beg your pardon," Hermione had let go of Ron and was eyeing Lavender with a kind of fierce anger that clearly had Ron nervous.

"Are you still hiding away behind your goody-goody plan to save the downtrodden?" Lavender asked her.

"What do you mean?" Hermione's voice had a dangerous edge to it.

"She doesn't meant it the way it sounds," Ron said. "It's just still surprising to all of us that you – "

"That I what?" Hermione said. "Didn't let the man rot in Azkaban?"

"Sacrificed quite so much," Ron said, his voice placating. "And for Malfoy."

"Who is standing right here," Hermione said, her voice low but angrier than Draco had ever heard it.

Ron, however, was just as angry. "You dropped out of school, Hermione. I know that. Lav knows that. Does he know it? Does he know the reason you didn't take your N.E.W.T.s, the reason you're working for knuts in that damn bookshop instead of interning somewhere is – "

"Is because no one will make an exception for a Mudblood, or at least not enough of one," Hermione said. "Is because I needed time and was told that wasn't an option. You didn't write your exams, and neither did Harry, but you've both got -. " She stopped herself. "I don't care to talk about this. You've shared your feelings on the topic before and we didn't agree then and we're not going to agree now."

"You could have gotten into the Auror program," Ron snapped. "Shacklebolt offered you a place."

"And it was a place I didn't want," she said, still pitching her voice so it wouldn't carry. "I am done – done – with Dark wizards. I don't want to fight anymore and I don't want to be a tool for the Ministry." She narrowed her eyes. "I'm done, Ron."

"If you're so done with Dark wizards what are you doing dragging Malfoy around like a bloody security blanket?" Ron said, reaching a hand out toward her.

"Maybe he's warm and cuddly at night," Hermione said, stepping back out of his reach until she was pressed up against Draco. "And he's not a Dark wizard."

Draco watched the gloating expression in Lavender's eyes as she looked at Hermione and wrapped herself around Ron Weasley. "Let her be, Ron" Lavender said. "After all, everyone finds their level. Maybe Hermione is happy with a job that isn't that demanding."

"Maybe," Ron said.

Draco waited until they were safely back in Hermione's flat and sitting on her sagging couch to ask her to explain. The look on her face warned him not to proceed.

He ignored it.

"Why didn't you go back to school," he said, one hand buried in her hair and the other still holding what was left of his cone.

"After the war it seemed a bit silly to have a curfew and – " she began.

"Liar," he said softly. "I grew up with people who lied as easily as they breathed. You can't compete."

She stood up, pulling her tangled hair out of his fingers and, stalked over to the small window. "The Ministry wouldn't accept a student as a… I couldn't vouch for anyone released from Azkaban if I were still in school."

Draco closed his eyes, remnants of his ice cream cone dripping down onto his fingers, as he sat on the purgatorial couch, surely rescued from someone else's trash, in the Muggle flat that was all Hermione Granger, war heroine and school dropout, could afford. He knew she was still dodging his question but decided to let it go. He shouldn't be surprised they both had demons after the war.

"I'm writing to McGonagall," he said at last. "You should be able to write those exams without going back to school. They owe you that at least." When he opened his eyes she was leaning up against the wall and looking at him.

"I've already tried that," she said. "It had to be done right away or no go."

"Well, try again," he said. "How dare that cheap bint sneer at you for working an honest job? Something tells me she didn't exactly get an Outstanding on Arithmancy or anything herself."

"It's not that easy," Hermione said. "I'm… I don't have parents who can write letters to the school board or…"

"You are a _fucking war heroine_," Draco snapped.

"And that and a handful of knuts will get you a cup of tea," Hermione snapped back.

"Coward," he said.

She stiffened. "How dare you," she said, her voice almost a hiss.

"Then prove you aren't," he said. "Demand they let you write those damn exams. Get a job that uses your talents. Stop hiding."

"You're dripping chocolate ice cream on our couch," Hermione said.

"Don't change the subject," Draco said, stopping to lick at the cone even though that homely gesture did somewhat undercut his attempt to push her into fighting for herself.

She glared at him but finally began to crumple. "I'm scared," she admitted. "What if they say no again?"

"Then we show up in that fucking Minister's office and remind him he owes his bloody life to you as well as that Weasel and Scarhead and we demand he make this right."

"Listen to you," Hermione said. "You can barely manage to go Diagon Alley without falling apart and now you're talking about bearding Shacklebolt in his own den."

"Yeah, well," Draco slouched down. "Maybe you're worth it. Maybe I owe you." He sighed. "Maybe I don't want to be nothing but your excuse."

. . . . . . . . . . .

He helped her write the letter to McGonagall. "Don't ask if you can take the exam," he said with a sigh as he crossed out large portions of her first draft. "_Tell_ her you plan to sit the exams this year and ask what would be the most convenient way for her for you to go about that."

Hermione chewed on a quill end and said, her voice unsure, "That seems really pushy. People aren't allowed…"

"Bullshite," he said, scribbling in his edits. "They put your life at risk, used all three of you as tools to fight a monster. The rules have been different for you for years. They don't get to suddenly play by the rules the moment those rules hurt you." He glanced at her. "And neither do you."

She read upside down as he wrote and he could see her mentally wringing her hands.

"Granger," he said at last, "I know what I'm doing here. My father was… he was not a good man. But he knew how to use influence and I watched him for years. Would you trust me?"

"You're _threatening_ her," she said, nerves dancing in her voice. "That can't possibly – "

"I'm not threatening her," Draco corrected the witch watching him. "I'm _reminding_ her that you have connections. Only clumsy fools openly threaten."

"If you say so," she said, sounding like she didn't believe him at all.

He pushed a plain sheet of parchment over to her. "I say so. Copy what I wrote exactly, sign it, and we'll send it off."

She did what he asked and he stood over her as she rolled the parchment into a neat tube, tied it, and attached it to the leg of the owl he had demanded she borrow from Potter. Once the owl had been sent on its way he pulled her into a hug. "There," he said as she leaned against him. It's done and now you just wait for her to send you a note telling you how she'd be delighted to have you take the exams with the next class of seventh years if you think you're up to it, and then we start cram school every night."

"Or for her to tell me bugger off," Hermione muttered.

"Not going to happen," Draco said confidently. "She might grimace a bit when she reads it but you'll get exactly what you want."

"If you say so," she said again in a tone that said she didn't think that would happen at all.

"I do," he said.

That's when he kissed her.

He hadn't meant to. Not that he hadn't thought about it often enough. He was a young man who spent every night in her bed. Even if he'd thought she was unattractive and an idiot – which he did not - he'd have fantasized about her. Even though he was pretty sure she only let him into her room because she was worried about him, he fantasized about her.

Sometimes when she was at work he had detailed, explicit fantasies that tended to involve her declaring him to be a good man and then doing things with her mouth that didn't allow for clear speech.

His fantasies had certainly never had him leaning down to impulsively kiss her and then springing back in horror, apologies falling from his mouth. "I'm sorry," he stammered. "I didn't mean… I know you don't… I'll… I'm sorry."

She stood there and put her hand to her mouth and stared at him as he babbled apologies and felt more and more like an idiot.

"I don't want to take advantage of you," she said at last and he gaped at her, not sure he'd heard her correctly. "I mean," she said, stammering now as much as he had, "you're still really vulnerable after your year in prison and you're kind of alone and I know I'm not the kind of girl you'd… not if you weren't kind of stuck here with me, and – "

"I kissed _you_," he interrupted her, oddly irritated. "You didn't take advantage of _me_."

She blinked and swallowed as she looked at him. "Would you do it again?" she asked so quietly he wasn't sure he'd heard her, and he realized she was rubbing the scar on her arm, probably without even realizing it.

He wondered if she knew how often she did that.

He brushed his lips over hers very lightly as he put his hands on her shoulders then slid them down her arms. He tightened his grip when his hands were above her elbows and pulled her against him as hard as he could and ran his tongue along her bottom lip. She trembled against him and then her mouth had opened and they were kissing frantically and he had his arms around her and she still just stood, fluttering and melting at his touch, her mouth meeting his with increasing abandon until he broke away and looked down at her, nearly panting.

"Hermione," he said – nearly begged - "is this really happening? Tell me I'm not still lying on that damn cot in the cold hallucinating."

She finally reached a hand up to brush some of his hair out of his face, tucking it behind an ear. "I think it's happening," she said. "It's definitely happening. Though I can't quite believe the fabled Slytherin sex god is – "

He cut her off at that and kissed her again, letting his teeth graze over her lip until she whimpered. "I assure you," he said when he released her again, "my reputation was vastly overblown."

"Could've fooled me," she said, leaning in against his chest.

He rested his cheek along her hair, flattered at her assessment but needing to reassure her anyway. "Hermione Granger, you are the only woman who's so much as seen me naked." She made a startled little movement in his arms and he laughed. "When you bathed me that first night, remember? Nearly skeletal and covered in a year's worth of filth? I'm sure I was unbearably sexy; I don't know how you restrained yourself from ravishing me on the spot." He pulled her over the couch and settled himself into one of the sunken areas, her on his lap. She shifted until she'd arranged herself with her cheek against his shoulder.

"Not the Slytherin sex god, then?" she asked. At his snort of derision she mumbled, "I figured I wasn't the sort of girl you… I mean, we were hardly friends – "

"An understatement," he said.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked.

He flinched when he saw she was rubbing at her scar again but all he said was, "As long as you do."

"Can we go slowly?" she asked and he tightened his arms around her but didn't say anything until he couldn't stand the way she was fussing at her scar and put a hand over it.

"I don't care about your birth," he said. She started to speak and he cut her off. "I know I did. I _know_. I was a shite and I'm sorry. I don't care anymore, okay? Please stop rubbing at that thing. My father was a murdering rapist and if you can overlook that I think I can manage to overlook that yours turned on lights by flipping a switch rather than casting a lumos."

"It all hurts so much," she said.

"I know," he whispered, sorrier than he could say.

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – I eschewed answering reviews to post part 3 more quickly. If you have a specific question tumblr seems sort of ideal for that sort of thing but, of course, you know I love (in a way that's probably not healthy) that you read and review.**_


	4. Chapter 4

He discovered Harry Potter was coming over when he heard him arguing with Hermione in the hall outside the flat. At the sound of Potter's voice Draco stood up and backed away across their main room toward the bedroom. Hermione's bedroom. He exhaled and made himself appear calm. This would be fine. They'd hated each other as boys. They'd gone through a war. He'd been to prison. They were both different now.

It would be fine.

Except Potter was saying, "I don't get it, Hermione. I mean, fine, rescue the man. You're the girl who moves worms out of puddles, I get that. But he's out now. You've done your thing. Why is he still living with you? Send him on his way to one of –"

"This is not your problem." She cut him off. "He's happy here."

"He's not a bloody rescue dog, Hermione!"

"He's happy here. I'm happy having him here. Why do you care?"

"Because he's a wanker," Potter snapped so loudly he might have been standing a foot away from Draco the words were so clear. "He was a Death Eater, he betrayed everyone and everything you care about, and then you ruined your life to save him. It's enough." Potter sighed. "I just hate how much he's taken from you."

"I don't think my life is ruined."

She was offended. Draco braced himself against the doorframe, instincts telling him to go hide in the bedroom at war with the ones telling him to listen, to eavesdrop. To learn.

"Really? You work at a bloody bookstore ringing up the purchases of people who… and all because of him."

"I made my own choices and there's nothing wrong with my job." She paused. "And I think you're forgetting I needed time. Do we really have to do this again? Right here in the hallway? I chose not to go back to school right after the war."

"You chose to fuck your life up!"

"I _chose_ to save an innocent man from a lifetime of hell," Hermione snapped. "And I'm _choosing_ to open up my home to him."

"Not innocent," Harry said.

"Innocent," she said again, more insistently. "He was _innocent_.A boy, just like you were, except there was no one there to help him the way Molly was there for you." He could hear her sigh. "He was as alone as I was, Harry. Everyone wanted me to just pick and up move on like nothing had happened and, I'm sorry, but I couldn't. Can't."

"So this is my fault? Because I wasn't supportive enough? You were a fucking black hole of neediness, Hermione. No one alive could have been supportive enough for you."

Draco felt himself tense against the urge to fling open the door to the hall and hit the man. The woman had been _tortured._ He'd had to watch it. Maybe she'd downplayed it to her friends. Maybe they hadn't really understood how bad it had been but he had.

He did.

She still woke shaking.

"Not your fault, no," she was saying, "but you made your choice and I made mine and I'll not tolerate you standing there telling me how bad mine was. I made it for good reasons, Harry."

"He's _Malfoy._" Potter sounded frustrated.

"And he's my friend," Hermione said. "My… he's _mine_."

Draco stilled at that fierce possessive tone. So, apparently, did Potter.

"Oh, Hermione," he said. "Tell me you're not… not _Malfoy_."

"Oh yes," she said. "_Malfoy_. Draco."

"He's just going to use you," Potter said. "Take even more advantage than he already has."

Draco could almost hear her shrug. "Well, I've had a lot of experience with boys I love taking advantage. Maybe it's nice to have it be about… about just me instead of about my research skills for once."

Love.

Draco retreated all the way at that, shutting the door to the bedroom and lying down on the bed. On their bed. He put his fingers up to touch the fairy stone and closed his eyes.

When Hermione came into the flat, came into their room, she was alone. Potter had apparently decided he'd rather not visit with the paroled Death Eater, Draco Malfoy. She didn't mention he'd ever been there and Draco didn't ask.

"I got pizza," she said.

He sat up. "I love pizza," he said, "thanks."

. . . . . . . . . .

That night he sat in the bed – their bed – and watched her pull her hair back into a braid. It helped keep him from waking up with her hair in his mouth. She had on an old t-shirt and a pair of soft pajama bottoms and the fabric clung to her curves. He reached a hand out and touched the edge of one breast, tracing his fingers along the lines it made.

"You're so beautiful," he said quietly and she made a huffing noise and shook her head. "You are," he said again. I used to lie in prison and picture you in that white dress you wore when you came and saw me at the courthouse." He smiled a little. "I hated that dress when I first saw it, then spent months imagining every line, every wrinkle, every fold."

She'd stopped fussing with her hair and was still. "Why did you hate it?" she asked. "It was just a –"

"I thought I'd never be free again, never… never go out in the sun, never be in a place a sundress… it was light and freedom and warmth and all the things I thought I'd lost." He traced the curve of her breast again. "All the things you've given back to me."

"Anyone would have done it," she muttered self-consciously. "It was wrong to send you there in the first place. Keeping you there past your year would have been… it wasn't an okay thing to do."

He didn't bother to contradict her. Didn't point out that no one else had.

She was, as Potter had said, the girl who rescued worms from puddles. Who tried to free house elves. Who'd freed him.

"I don't know a lot of how I feel anymore," he continued. "It's still very strange. I still… I can hear the guards telling me I'm worthless. I can hear Voldemort threatening me. My whole family was worthless, he'd said. See if you can't save them, though I doubt you can." He swallowed. "I couldn't, of course."

"Your mother saved us all," Hermione said softly.

"And got herself killed by her own side for the trouble," Draco said.

Hermione nodded. Narcissa Malfoy had been turned on by Death Eaters when Harry Potter had stood up, not, as she'd claimed, dead. Draco had had to watch her be slaughtered in front of his eyes.

He'd never talked about that to anyone. Not to anyone else at Hogwarts. Not to anyone in detention. Not to the lawyer who'd somehow found this woman to save him. Not to her. Not until now and even now he couldn't really discuss it.

Well, she didn't talk about the war. They both understood the comfort of silence these days.

"I don't know, sometimes, if things I'm feeling are because of real things in front of me or because of nightmares still echoing in my head," Draco said. "I'm scared all the time. I know people hate me. I don't even really understand why you don't."

"Draco – " Hermione said but he held a hand up.

"Just…" He closed his eyes and swallowed and she was kissing him, her mouth gentle on his, and he felt himself take control and start to kiss her back, kiss her far more roughly than she had until he had her pinned beneath him on the mattress, her hands at his neck and he was pulling that t-shirt off over her head. "Could we go more quickly?" he asked.

In answer she dragged his mouth back down to hers and ground her pelvis into him.

He took that as a yes.

He ran a hand over her breasts, marveling at how perfect her skin was, how utterly unblemished. Other than the slur carved on her arm she was flawless.

She was flawless.

When he ran a thumb over a nipple she gasped and arched up under his hand and, never a slow study, he nipped at her lip with his teeth and then moved his mouth to suckle and lick at her breasts. She nearly keened under his touch and he slid his hands under her back and pulled her up to him, moving from one breast to the other as she curved her body to him.

"I never thought I'd do this," he said. "Never thought… I told that lawyer I'd die –"

"Well, you won't," she said, propping herself up on an elbow and looking at him. "You do want _me_, right? Not just… a body, right?"

"Oh, I want you," he said. "You, just you, always you. You forever and you for always and you until the bloody sun explodes." He pushed the long hair that had fallen into his face back and looked at her. "You do believe me, right?"

Her brown eyes sparkled a little to much but she smiled at him, if a little shakily, and said, "Really?"

"Really, truly," he said.

"I…" she trailed off and he looked at her.

"What?" he asked.

"Just… never mind," she said. "I'm glad you… you want me, that's all."

"I do," he said. "I really do."

He lowered his mouth back to her skin, tasting her, letting his tongue drag from the curve of the underside of her breast down along her stomach to the waistband of those faded pajamas. She whimpered again and he let his forehead rest against her for a moment as he tugged the fabric down over her hips. She raised her bum to help and he slid hands under her, feeling the rounded shape of her arse in his hands and then, her pajamas still only halfway down her thighs, he kissed and licked along the curve of her hipbone towards her. Finally, he slid his tongue lightly along her and, she gasped and struggled to push the pants down the rest of the way. He laughed and pulled then all the way off and she spread her legs with eager and fervent abandon and he ran his fingers along her, pulling her open and looking at the pink perfection of her.

She tasted better than she looked.

She sounded better than she tasted.

She keened and whimpered and gasped and grabbed onto his hair as he licked and probed and he could tell, novice that he was, that she was close, damnit, she was, when she hauled him back up, pulling him by that long hair, and nearly snarled at him. He'd been lost in the world of pleasing her and wasn't sure, for a moment, what she wanted until she sat up and fumbled with his clothing. "You," she said, "I want to feel _you_," and he didn't need to be told twice.

He shucked off his clothing and positioned himself, checked her face to confirm that, yes, she wanted this, and then, using his hand to help guide himself, thrust into her.

He lasted exactly fourteen thrusts.

He knew because he counted.

She came at thrust number nine. No screams. No dramatic gasping of his name. She just tensed, closed her eyes, and shuddered.

The knowledge that he'd done that, he'd brought her there to her nearly silent climax, pushed him to his. Those last five stokes were almost unbearable and he did choke out her name as he lost himself.

As he found himself.

Words of devotion and adoration and love hung on his tongue but he pressed his face into he neck as he lay on her and kept silent. She wrapped her arms around him and twined a leg through his and he could feel the hot tears he didn't want her to know about running down the side of his nose.

"Draco," she said.

"Hermione?"

He thought he'd known what fear was. He hadn't. Fear was lying here waiting for her to tell him to leave.

"I didn't… I didn't get you out of Azkaban for…you don't _owe_ me. Don't… don't do this as some kind of repayment."

He lifted his head and looked at her.

She went on. "I don't want to… I could fall… I don't want to be hurt, is all. I… this scares me."

He sat all the way up and looked down at her. "You think I… that I have a feeling of _obligation_? That I wanted to…no. I… it's just you. Just you for me. Broken, lousy, Death Eater me."

"Just you for me too," she whispered. "And you aren't broken."

"You just don't want to see the cracks," he said, lying back down.

"You're changed," she said, her voice still very quiet. "It was war. It did that to all of us. Me too. And Azkaban… you've gone through hell but you aren't _broken_. Forged, maybe. Tempered. Not broken."

. . . . . . . . . .

The longer it took McGonagall to respond to Hermione's note regarding the N.E.W.T. exams the tenser she got. Draco watched her pretend not to wait for the post every day, watched her pretend not to care that the woman hadn't replied yet.

He knew she didn't really believe this would work.

Knew she didn't want to admit how much she cared.

He held her without telling her it would be fine even though he knew it would be. He would sit in the miserable townhouse Potter had inherited from the Blacks and go through their law library if he had to; he'd face down all the politicians that wanted to use her as a bit of victory propaganda while holding her to their ridiculous bureaucratic nonsense about testing windows. He wasn't going to let her keep hiding like this.

"It's different for me," she'd say, rubbing at her arm.

"Me too," he'd say, putting her hand over his Mark.

"Welcome to being a despised minority," she tried to jest but she sounded so sad he'd just hold her more tightly and silently damn the rest of the world to the hell they so deserved.

Finally McGonagall's response arrived. It was terse. A generous person would claim she was overwhelmed with the responsibilities of rebuilding a school that had been a battlefield. Draco, not that generous, suspected she'd always found swotty Hermione a bit of an irritant and therefore hadn't been motivated to seek her out and make sure she finished school; she probably didn't like being reminded of that now.

Well, Draco knew how easily rules got bent when people in power chose to do so. McGonagall could do some bending.

_It would be easiest for you to stay at Hogwarts and write the exams with this year's class,_ McGonagall had written. _Let me know your arrival date and I'll have a guest room prepared for you._

Hermione looked at the parchment with wide eyes, then up at Draco. Those brown eyes narrowed in consideration and then she looked back at the sheet and grabbed a quill to write a quick response. He looked over her shoulder and felt his shoulders tighten with every word.

_Draco Malfoy and I will be there the day before the exams begin to get settled so please prepare two rooms unless you're comfortable with us staying together. As I'm sure you're aware, he was also unable to write his exams on schedule. I look forward to seeing you. Perhaps all three of us can have dinner after the exams are over. ~ Hermione Granger._

She'd sent it off before he could stop her.

"You learn fast," he said, charmed against his will.

She smiled at him, a warm smile that made his mouth twitch up in an answering grin.

"I guess it's cram time," she said. "Let's figure out which exams we're going to ace."

. . . . . . . . . .

By spring they'd turned the kitchen into a Potions lab.

"Potions," Hermione said, "And Runes. And Arithmancy."

"Don't want to be a Auror?" Draco teased and she snorted.

"I want nothing – _nothing_ – to do with the Ministry," she said. She dropped her head and said, "I thought I might like to travel, find Potions ingredients. Get out of Britain."

"Why Runes?" he asked.

"More complex Potions can be adapted using runic work," she said, not looking up at him. "I think. And if we can use that rock around your neck to safely incorporate plants that only grow where the Fey congregate we might want extra warding when we work with them."

He bent over the paper she was reading and got more and more absorbed into the possibilities until he'd pulled it away from her and was just reading it. She'd brought books over from Harry Potter's library and their living room was piled with texts – many probably outlawed but that was the old Black book collection for you – on the subjects she was pursuing.

"You're coming with me, right?" she asked, head still bent down as he read. "I'm pretty good at camping after that year on the run. I do a mean undetectable extension charm; we can get everything we need into a couple of packs to live like, well, the brilliant witch and wizard we are and –"

"Really?" he asked, setting down the article he'd taken from her. "You'd really… yes."

"Granger and Malfoy's Rare Ingredients?" she asked, looking up.

"Malfoy's Rare Ingredients," he corrected her.

She frowned at first and looked like she was about to argue and then she just stopped and stared at him. "You're not…?"

"It's just you," he said. "Just you for me."

He waited, watching her. The long moment balanced between them "Malfoy's Rare Ingredients, then," she said.

He nodded. "After we pass those exams. No one will buy from people who don't have Potions N.E.W.T.s." He paused. "Do we have to invite Potter?"

"Yes," she said.

He hid his smile under a pout and she laughed and picked the book she was studying up and joined him on the miserable couch he hoped she had no intention of trying to pack up into her magical camping kit. "I love you," she said. "Draco Malfoy."

"That's good," he said as she leaned on him, "because I just adore you. I'd do anything for you."

"Even go camping?" she teased.

"Even get married with Potter present," he said.

. . . . . . . . . .

She passed, of course.

So did he.

McGonagall pretended to look happy to see them both but people who lied quite well had, as he'd said, raised Draco. The Head of Hogwarts was happier to see them leave. She hoped they'd never return.

Harry Potter witnessed their simple ceremony at the Ministry. So did Ron Weasley. Hermione had suggested to Ron he leave Lavender at home and the man was smart enough to follow her advice. If neither man was exactly pleased with her choice they'd both acknowledged that she was happy and that was what mattered to them.

Harry Potter had actually shaken Draco's hand and muttered awkward thanks that the man had gotten Hermione "out of that fucking bookstore."

Theodore Nott stood up for Draco, looking uncomfortable. His eyes widened when he spotted the fairy stone around Draco's neck and he made an almost undetectable questioning expression, tipping his head towards Hermione. When Draco nodded, Theo yanked Hermione into a tight hug. "Was it obligation or love?" he asked so quietly neither Ron nor Harry could hear him. "When you gave him that thing, what was it?"

"It was obligation," she replied, just as quietly.

Theo shook his head. "Bloody Gryffindors," he muttered. "Giving away a fortune to do the right thing by a man whom you didn't even like."

She stiffened and muttered, "It's not obligation anymore."

"You saved him," was all Theodore Nott said, his voice controlled. "And I owe you because I couldn't, wouldn't have even been allowed to try. I'm as broke as the rest of us, thanks to my father's wartime choices and the Ministry, but if you ever need anything I can do –"

She stepped back and smiled at him and nodded. Harry and Ron both glared at the lanky, dark-haired man. Accepting Draco was just at the edge of doable; two snakes was too many. Theo excused himself as soon as was possible after the ceremony, giving Hermione one last glance of mostly concealed wonder and shaking Draco's hand.

"I'm glad he came," Hermione said as she packed her bag. Draco watched her drop things into it with some awe. She'd undersold her undetectable extension charm.

"He's a good guy," Draco said. "Potter just makes those of us who were on the wrong side uncomfortable."

Hermione leaned over and kissed him on the tip of his nose. "You'll get used to him," she promised. "And he'll get used to you." The latter was muttered under her breath and had the distinct edge of a threat.

Draco doubted that but he didn't care. Potter could go hang. He'd gotten the girl and he'd decided he didn't care about anyone or anything else. He'd make nice and the tosser could either do the same or not. It didn't matter to him.

He reached up to touch the rock at his neck. He hadn't been able to afford to get Hermione a ring and she just had a string wrapped around her finger; she wouldn't even let him transfigure it. "Let's keep it what it is," she'd said.

Still, he'd stammered an apology about his poverty and how he wished he could have given her one of the heirlooms from his seized vaults. She'd just kissed him and suggested he use the royalties from their first patented potion to buy her a ring that would leave 'dilute purple girl and all her ilk' furious with jealousy.

"I'll do that," he'd said.

"I love you," he said now.

"Enough to go camping, even" she said.

"As long as it's with you, I'll go anywhere," he said.

**~ finis ~**

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